What is Evernote?

Evernote is a freemium (free but limited accounts supported by premium all-access paid accounts) web service which strives to be your external brain.

With Evernote, you are able to put all the information that you may normally keep in your subconscious, across various bookmarking services or on those little pieces of paper you stuff into your pocket and never see again.

I’ve been a premium member since April of this year, and I don’t know what I would do without it. Evernote has truly become my external brain, allowing me to collect all of the info that I consume on a daily basis into one trusted system, in true GTD style.

As a premium member, you get such features as:

An increased monthly upload allowance

Attachment and in-client editing of any file type up to 25MB in size

Encrypted data transmission

Enhanced image recognition

An ad-free interface

The image recognition is beyond belief, and indexes text in a variety of languages right from a snapshot. This has been extremely helpful when archiving blog posts to read later, and taking shots on the road of signs.

The Android Client

Evernote on Android has been out in Beta form for a few weeks now (since around the time I got my HTC Hero), and I’ve been using it heavily since. Evernote’s development strategy on the Android platform has been swift, taking into account user reactions and feature requests.

The Beta was updated almost daily, giving plenty of bug fixes and speed/stability enhancements with each new version.

Now we have the full version 1.1 released, and it is Awesome.

Just yesterday, I used my Android-powered phone to unclutter my wallet, allowing me to remove various business cards, pieces of paper and other pocket-stuffing paraphernalia.

I simply took a photo through Evernote of the business cards in my wallet, the text on the cards was indexed through their image recognition software, and now I can simply search for that contact’s information with many different criteria. Being able to search through different criteria is a must for me, because my brain works in a spatial & chronological manner, which makes finding information I need to remember through both location and timestamps optimal.

I can search in Android for notes that were created near a certain location, or at a specific time. If I remember that I had a certain event happen, say a meeting for AppIndie, and I created a note before or after that, I can search for the meeting notes and make the jump to the note in question with ease.

If you have an Android-powered phone, I would highly recommend picking up the Evernote client from the Market app. Surely by now I’ve used it enough to warrant the small $45/year price tag for the premium service, and I have a feeling that it can be infinitely valuable to anyone who gives it a shot.